Cameroon: Catholic priest shot dead

Father Cosmas Ombato

Source: Fides/MHM

A missionary priest from Kenya has been shot dead in Cameroon's troubled South West region where hundreds have been killed or displaced in an escalation of separatist violence.

Father Cosmas Ombato was a young Mill Hill missionary serving as assistant parish priest of the St Martin of Tours Parish in the village of Kembong, in restive southwest Cameroon.

He was reportedly caught in crossfire between the military and armed separatists.

Violence has flared in the West African nation's South West and North West regions in months of fighting between government forces and English-speaking armed militants who want an independent state.

In October, an American Baptist missionary was gunned down in the town of Bamenda in the North West, where scores of students and their teachers have been abducted from schools.

Another Kenyan missionary was killed in Buea in the South West in April 2017.

The crisis in English-speaking Cameroon started in 2016 as an industrial strike by lawyers and teachers asking for investment and development which - they say - is being withheld from the Francophone regions and the recently re-elected President, 83-year-old Paul Biya, who has been in power for 36 years.

The unrest snowballed into an internal armed conflict since last year when separatists joined and symbolically declared the independence of the Federal Republic of Ambazonia.

LINK

https://millhillmissionaries.co.uk/cameroon-crisis-young-mill-hill-missionary-killed-by-army/